Strategic Thinking & Strategic Action

Fostering strategic thinking and strategic action by organizational leaders since 2007.

Help is on the way!
Coaching Lee Crumbaugh Coaching Lee Crumbaugh

Help is on the way!

I grew up in a culture that expected you to deal with life and solve the problems thrown at you. No whining, don’t be vulnerable, make things work!

Luckily, societal attitudes evolved and I married a clinical social worker who adjusted my thinking. I personally received clinical and non-clinical guidance from counselors and coaches. Mentors and friends helped keep me on a solid path and accountable for good decisions and execution.

Being a business coach who spends 10 hours or so a week in session with clients is a far cry from the life I would have envisioned for myself when I was playing cowboys and Indians or dealing with teenage angst. But that I am able to be of such ongoing help to business owners and leaders is a real privilege. I am proud of my clients who have taken what once was a taboo step: Opening up their businesses and their minds to let me in so that they can share and get expert third-party insight on how to make their businesess better in the ways that they want them to be better.

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Pick the best: Don’t let the bad drive out the good
Coaching Lee Crumbaugh Coaching Lee Crumbaugh

Pick the best: Don’t let the bad drive out the good

It may be the same with every industry. Likely the sham artists and hucksters and skimmers and those just in it for the buck are pervasive. We all see them and have to deal with them (or try to ignore them).

I know that in business coaching, there are those who purport to be serious business coaches but aren’t. There are those who call life coaching or motivational coaching or something other than business coaching “business coaching.” There are those whose coaching credentials are hollow, missing, or misrepresented, who don’t know net margin from a fishing net.

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Why New Year’s resolutions fail: The problem of implementation
Strategic planning Lee Crumbaugh Strategic planning Lee Crumbaugh

Why New Year’s resolutions fail: The problem of implementation

Yesterday, New Year’s resolutions came to mind as I was writing year-end reports to my coaching clients.

A blog post on goal-setting and achievement that I wrote earlier this year, Don’t waste your time planning, unless…, cited research showing that 92% of people who make New Year’s resolutions never actually achieve them. While I recognize that what we resolve to achieve in the New Year can be a casual goal without a lot of commitment behind it, to me it seems silly to put a marker out there and then ignore it or only half-heartedly go after it.

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Coaching and change
Coaching Lee Crumbaugh Coaching Lee Crumbaugh

Coaching and change

My fellow coaches and I use the Pygmalion Effect, not as a trick but as a valuable tool, by seeing the best in and expecting the best from our clients, building them up so they can excel at whatever they want and need to be good at and at progressing toward their loftier goals.

Simply, by expecting the best behaviors, we are more likely to see the best outcomes. Rise and shine!

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